Intermittent fasting

This is not a yoga concept, or so I thought, until I listened to an Ayurvedic podcast. Looking back, if I followed to a "T' what my Ayurvedic practitioner recommended; I'd be intermittently fasting, just calling it by a different name. I've been practicing intermittent fasting and the side effects have been surprising. I heard of intermittent fasting and tried a version or two of it in the past, but it never stuck. Fast forward several year and I found myself in Torrance Memorial Hospital's conference room with 700 other people listening to the author of The End of Alzheimer's, Dr. Dale Bredesen. According to his book there is a cure for Alzheimers but it's not a one size fits all kind of cure. It involves something like 36 different tests and taking specific steps based on the results of each test. Since my father is living with Alzheimers, I decided to follow all the protocol I could without having taken the tests. My father's Alzheimers is the catalyst for my intermittent fasting but it's the side effects that has made it stick.

Intermittent fasting is when you cycle between eating and fasting. I eat my last meal in the evening somewhere between 6:00 - 7:00. Depending on when I last ate informs when I start eating the next day. If I have my last meal at 7:00 pm I don't eat until 11:00 am the next day. That gives my body 16 hours to fast. I could tell you all the reasons this is good for you but i'd have to look it up and regurgitate the info. Since that isn't going to happen if you are interested as to why this works check out the aforementioned book.

Dr. Bredesen didn't say intermittent fasting would stop sugar cravings but that is what I experienced. In the past I tried to stay away from sugar. This quest started in the 90's when I found out sugar was responsible for my child's stuttering. I took sugar out of our families diet and the stuttering stopped, like magic! The sugar was gone but I still craved it. I read The Sugar Blues, sipped diluted vinegar, ate bitter foods, acupressure seeds, acupuncture, any trick I could find to stop the cravings. They all seemed to work for awhile but the cravings always reared its head. I'm not saying I was trying to get rid of fruit, it was the processed sugar that I was trying to shut out. The cravings I was trying to get rid of were loud, so loud they didn't go away until the sweet went away until I started intermittent fasting. The calmness that comes from outrunning a craving is incredibly welcome and peaceful.

What I find fascinating is we have this ancient wisdom of Ayurveda that suggests leaving long periods of time between meals (no snacking) and moving towards eating 2 meals a day; the larger meal in the middle of the day and a lighter meal at the end of the day. By following this protocol we are intermittently fasting, just not calling it that. The ancients are making a come back just using different descriptions.